Review: As the Hurricane Winds Blow

Perry Zenon, As the Hurricane Winds Blow (Black Haired Raven Publishing 2024)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222103322-as-the-hurricane-winds-blow?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_27

A cozy collection of ghost stories for a dark and stormy night

A powerful hurricane rages on the banks of the Mississippi, and the Delaunay family hunkers down inside the family home to tell horror stories. As the wind howls, they pile up cushions in the living room, preparing to brave the storm.
This anthology comprises separate short stories with dark and/or supernatural themes. There is a haunted asylum beset by a series of mysterious deaths, and a vengeful spirit haunts a funhouse. One tells of a ‘mirror world’ inhabited by a sinister entity. A New Orleans detective uncovers a web of madness. A time traveller goes back in time to prevent a tragic event.
Common to all the stories is a focus on the darker side of human experience—fear, obsession, guilt. The family examines together the fine line between reality and the unknown and finds that by sticking together in the face of the storms of life, the human spirit survives.
The text is riven with quite a few clichés: ‘air thick with anticipation’, ‘news swept through the town like wind’, ‘vehicle shrouded in silence’, ‘nerves honed to a steely resolve’, ‘the tranquillity of her reserve was shattered’, ‘a trail of confusion and fear’. It could use a developmental edit and proofread.
The asylum story jumps too quickly to the accounts of the deaths—we’re not even sure what the protagonist is doing there. And the tension is thrown away by resorting to ‘then there were more deaths’. Other opportunities to build tension are thrown away, I thought—the enchanted mirror could be terrifying, for example, but we see it too soon.
The stories introduce great ideas that could potentially be scary, but better building of suspense is crucial for the ghost story genre. In several places, the stories could have been scarier if they were longer, with more attention on building suspense.
I could have done without the intercallary chapters about which family member is going to tell the next story. All except for the last one, which summarises the moral of the story for each one.
If you love ‘ghost stories’, sink your teeth into these.